What would Europe be like if Christianity hadn't caught on and we still had weird Pagan religions?

What would Europe be like if Christianity hadn't caught on and we still had weird Pagan religions?

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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Buddhism
atlasobscura.com/articles/water-whisper-magic-belarus-tradition-health
youtube.com/watch?v=k3VSRSJYjzs
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More primitive

It is hard to say. It's likely that there would inevitably be a greater push towards one central religion as time/understanding/power grew.

Wrong. Greece was not Christian and they laid the foundations to countless Western values. Rome was not Christian and they conquered the Middle East, killed Jesus and enslaved jews. There's also older civilizations like Egyptians and Babylonians. Stop pushing this narrative that Christianity does everything. It isn't true. If it was, then why aren't African nations thriving now?

Buddhist probably

we would have flying pyramid space craft and would be en-route for our holow-earth colony Hyperborea

I honestly wish we would be able to see more interaction between Buddhism and the various Greek philosophies.

Thats why i said buddhist
Buddhisim would appeal to the greeks, and when the silk road REALLY start trucking along, a religiously splintered and fractured land will be perfect to adopt it

We wouldn't be Christ cucks that's for sure, Europe might even had a better chance to unify under one nation. This is because Nordic, Celtic, Slavic (etc) were all very similar mostly just differentiating between the names of the gods.

We had it en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Buddhism
It never caught on because despite what pan-aryanist will tell you, Buddhism is too eastern for the Mediterranean world.

Your logic makes no sense. Europe had one religion under Christianity for centuries, by virtue of that Europe should have been one nation. The differences between European ethno-linguistic groups are far deeper than religion.

Manichean or zoroastrian. And if by some miracle the old religions survived you can compare them with hinduism since its the only indo european faith that survived.

>you can compare them with hinduism since its the only indo european faith that survived.
Hinduism is very influnced by non-Indo-European groups such as Dravidian. Maybe you mean the Vedas which is largely indic?

Add this to your list of Gods, user.

I'm just saying a religion deeply rooted in Europian ancestry might have stood a better chance in the long term. This is something all ethnic groups could share in, something that Christianity didn't exactly have.

>I'm just saying a religion deeply rooted in Europian ancestry might have stood a better chance in the long term.
The Southern European Mediterranean religions not only had common bonds that transcended Southern Europe into Asia and North Africa but had Pre-Indo European groups such as Etruscans influence them as well. What you are saying is not rooted in the reality.

Assuming everything else had remained the same, I would say that Western Europe would have been dominated by Germanic paganism. This was the old religion of northerners outside the Roman area and so would have received support from the nobility (see Uppsala), such as the Franks.

I imagine a similar development for the West as actually happened (politics/art etc), but with a kind of Baldr-centred chivalry. All following developments, up to and including irreligion, would probably be based around Odin and/or Baldr in particular.

The Greco-Roman area could have possibly fell under the influence of some other Middle-Eastern religion for a time, such as Zoroastrianism. Whatever this would have been, it would have most likely become the religion of the Byzantines and could have affected their relationship with the Sassanids. It would be interesting to see what Islam or its equivalent would have looked like.

bait

>Too eastern
>Founded by a blue eyed white Saka

Hinduism isn't a Indo-European faith.

Vedic hinduism is

Well, Islam would probably have a pretty sizable base, especially in once-occupied lands like Spain, Greece, etc without any inquisitions or shit like that to chase them out. No Christianity means no with-hunts so witchcraft and superstition would reign supreme. I've heard theories that for a short time Witchcraft was nearly as common among the rural Europeans as Christianity, and those traditions were burned or discarded during Inquisitions and shit when they'd go and rip up old lady tits with iron pincers and shit. Witchcraft is by nature matriarchal, giving women a natural inclination to go into and seek out leadership positions. So we'd have a bunch of delusional women who think they have magic powers running things.

I think it would be a whole lot shittier than it is now.

Had Rome held itself together and been able to conquer Parthia, I hold that today western paganism would be extremely similar to Shintoism.
State Shinto more specifically.
You would even have had the Buddhist influences to help shape it (Theravada in this case).

Please educate yourself before making such embarrassing comments.

Buddhism had a tendentious amount of influence upon Hellenic philosophy, Stoicism and Neoplatonism in particular.
Hell, we have records of Buddhist missionaries active in Alexandra, the Levant and even Athens.

Franks derived their power specifically from med Europe. your theory is retarded.

>I hold that today western paganism would be extremely similar to Shintoism.
I hold you are a brainlet.
>Buddhism had a tendentious amount of influence upon Hellenic philosophy, Stoicism and Neoplatonism in particular.
such as?

Symbolic power, of course. Not being Christians wouldn't have made Charlemagne a shitty military leader, though.

>weird Pagan religions
>implying Christianity is any less "weird"
I assume eventually all the pantheons would just sort of integrate together, probably with the Roman religion as the central one for most people. There'd probably also be more atheists because we wouldn't have the "agree with me or you go to Hell" autism.

Why would people convert to Germanic paganism? It was the Germans themselves who were desperately trying to enter Roman society. Not the reversal by any stretch of the word
People were already dissatisfied with the state paganism of Rome. A bunch of Germanic and Celtic Barbarians wouldn't have changed that

>Thinks Eastern had anything to do with race during the Classical Period.

Funny you brought up the Saka, whom both Greeks and Romans considered as Savages.

Yes, because Greeks and Romans are known for their fierce blue eyes.....

Hopefully something like Shintoism. The specific traditions would vary from country to country.

What is with the shinto obsession meme? Nothing indicates European paganism was anything like shintoism.

>Sulla was red-blond,[35] blue-eyed, and had a dead-white face covered with red marks.[36] Plutarch, the ancient historian, notes that Sulla considered that "his golden head of hair gave him a singular appearance".[37]

Ah yes, naming 5-10 people with light hair means Romans and Greeks were known for their fierce blue eyes despite their writings constantly contrasting their own looks with blue eyed barbarians. I can't believe you are serious at this point.

Except "witchcraft" is mostly made up bullshit used by Christians to refer to anything they didn't like at a given time. An ignorant picture. European paganism was not for the most part matriarchal. Who knows what Islam may have looked like, but pagan rulers would still have been ambitious to carve out their power. And if Middle-Eastern monotheists railed against authorities they would still be put down, whether it would be called an inquisition or not. Let's not forget that it was the Romans that sent the Jews wandering for rebellion.

If by "witchcraft" you all mean folksy magic, it goes on in the present day in Europe atlasobscura.com/articles/water-whisper-magic-belarus-tradition-health
If by witchcraft you mean wicca mumbo jumbo than it was only ever popular with posers.

>What would Europe be like if Christianity hadn't caught on and we still had weird Pagan religions?
We'd all be worshipping Mithra, the unconquerable Sun, or Allah by now.

Monotheism was the inevitable logical conclusion of religious beliefs in the west. Oral traditions just don't cut it in an age where books could maintain wisdom that future generations could build off of.

I'd define Christianity more by the trinity than a hard monotheism such as found in mainstream Judaism or Islam. More like Europe traded worshiping The Son surrounded by the Sun to worshiping The Son surrounded by the Sun.

The Trinity is not a tritheistic concept, but rather that the single God above all defies direct observation, given his transcendent nature, and is better expressed a function of the relationship between three consubstantial beings

Still a far cry from having a God of government and a god of war and a god of crafts and a god of metallurgy and a god of the sea, etc, and even pretty far removed from the dualism of Zoroastrianism.

>Rome
>conquered the Middle East
Uh no sweetie, the Middle East was more or less partitioned between the Romans/Byzantines and the Parthians/Persians until the Arabs showed up.

Middle East didn't even exist. It's a 19th century British construct. YMMV on how much the region is actually united.

>Why would people convert to Germanic paganism? It was the Germans themselves who were desperately trying to enter Roman society. Not the reversal by any stretch of the word
Well, OP's question states "Christianity hadn't caught on". Some Germans might have converted to whatever else the Romans would have going on, but the original religion to the north of the Empire would obviously be Germanic paganism. Doubtless it would play out as a contest between these two. Christianity is known for proselytism, though. So, would whatever hypothetical religion of the Romans gain much ground considering Germanic paganism still lasted for quite a while up north (despite heavy Christianisation efforts). Keep in mind of course that it was Germanic tribes that largely set themselves up as rulers all over Western Europe. Even if the rulers didn't entirely impose dogma in a uniform manner, there would still be benefits from being the same religion as the elite. And of course the Germanic pagans would have taken their religion quite seriously, as did the Christians.

>Oral traditions just don't cut it in an age where books could maintain wisdom that future generations could build off of.
India, Aztecs, and Japan seem to disagree.

all had geographic homogeneity which allowed entrenched religious status quos to remain uncontested, holding these cultures back in a way which simply wasn't possible in the broken, varied terrain of Europe.

uhhhh all of them have written records.

He also had a fleshy lump on the top of his head and his hands swung past his knees.

Do the Scythians have that too?

He was from the Sakya clan not SAKA, its sanskrit of Saha-kya, as in one who helps, one who is capable, the root word being Saha or capable.

Fucking revisionist faggots.

>when you wanna be a contrarian smartypants so much that you'll be retardedly wrong just to disagree with someone

Italia was inhabited by celts along with greeks, that's why you get some light-featured Romans. Why is this so hard to take in?

What is Walt Whitman doing in the top middle?

when the brahmins saw buddha they called him a black human being. This may refer to ritual impurity, and not skin color, but its hard to say.

all hinduism is vedic

>all had geographic homogeneity
If you ignore how much Japs hated Japs from other parts of Japan.

It's Odin but I like to think that Walt Whitman had magical powers.

how much people like or dislike their neighbors is fairly irrelevant. What matters, for example, is how in Europe the king of England can get away with breaking off from the Catholic church and not have to worry about a horde of cavalry archers and light infantry trekking across the steppe to come burn down his kingdom, because he's on an island and has a powerful navy backing him up.

If you're on an isolated island or in a riverland surviving off runoff water from the himalayan glacier, destroying uppity locals is a simple matter, and if you can't crush them militarily you can strangle them economically

If there was no Christianity doesn't that imply there would be no Islam either? this changes everything about yurop and the middle east

I mean who say that but Nobunaga was basically turned into Satan for what he did at Mt. Hiei.

>Islam existing if Christianity had never caught on

Islam's whole premise is being the sequel to christianity and final abrahamic religion, no christianity means no islam

More like China, probably.

>when the brahmins saw buddha they called him a black human being.
Do you have any evidence for this? Especially since many of the myths in Hinduism have dark skinned gods, for example Krishna, the last avatar of Vishnu before the start of the Kali yuga whose name literally means dark or black, and Rama the hero of the Ramayana is said to have his name derived from Ram or black in the Atharvaveda, it seems unlikely such a quote exists.

Wasn't Balder basically converted into a christ analogy? If so it doesn't follow that he would have taken the place of Jesus in popular religion as he wouldn't have been propped up as a counter to christ.
We also know, if I'm not mistaken, that the religious importance of gods tend to wax and wain in polyteism. For instance, Tyr was once the leader of the norse pantheon.
We however know that at around the time of Jesus mystical religions and cults had become increasingly popular so we'd probably see alot of those around, with possibly one eventually coming to dominate the west similarly to christianity.

Islam wouldn't exist without christianity. It's a blatant rip off of it and judaism.

Witchcraft was, just like some anons already have pointed out, just a label christians used for folk magic and remedies and it didn't start to go away untill large scale urbanisation started to take root. In some places it's still practices. Arguably, stuff like throwing salt to ward of bad luck and other common superstitions so as not to step on A-marked manhole covers are examples of modern witchcraft.

Ecclectism and western paganism goes hand in hand. People, atleast greeks and romans, tended to view most foreign gods as exotic versions of domestic ones.

See Also read up on tendencies such as interpretatio graeca.

Western paganism didn't have conversion in the same sense as the abrahamic religions. There was generally nothing stopping a person from adopting foreign gods into their worships. As such the pantheons weren't static but fluidly contained whatever deities the individual though existed, no matter the origin of them. You'd be better of thinking of paganism as cultures rather than abrahamic-like religions.
Supernatural entities were in some cases also understood as local rather than universal.

We'd be friendlier religion wise but still try to kill each other.

Why is christianity so lame?
All of those are better in terms of mythology

>weird Pagan religions?

Weird? Everyone on Earth used to understand "the thing which causes the lightning" is a superhuman, conscious intelligent entity. The deviant "weird" people are the ones who think "everyone except Pharaoh has a license from God to kill."

youtube.com/watch?v=k3VSRSJYjzs

>Wasn't Balder basically converted into a christ analogy? If so it doesn't follow that he would have taken the place of Jesus in popular religion as he wouldn't have been propped up as a counter to christ.
Indeed, there do appear to be theories about the influence of the Christ story on Balder and Ragnarok. While there do appear to be some influences, to what exact degree is not certain. I doubt there wouldn't have been some kind of fearful apocalyptic story, though. Western Europe seems to have been heading in that direction, separate from that of Byzantine Christianity, after all. Balder just seems the most likely candidate given what we know for the more likely Germanic scenario. Of course had there been more Celtic, or even Slavic etc, dominance things could look somewhat different still.

>Supernatural entities were in some cases also understood as local rather than universal.
This is especially true with the Classical/Greco-Roman culture. The Olympians, major deities, obviously physically residing on Mount Olympus. Germanic paganism, as interpreted by the Germanic peoples, was more otherworldly in its cosmological views. Nine realms, Valhalla etc.

No one said christianity made rome better doe

>I want to live in marvel' universe! : the post

well, if there wasn't for christianity, islam would never come to be. there is a big chance it would be some kind of sincretism with eastern religions, tengrism probably.

That has nothing to do with the post they were responding to.

Its a faulty, somewhat ignorant theory.

Europe would have nation-cults for each nation, with their own pantheon. There'd be big temples all over, and sacrifices, and holidays. It'd be sorta neat. More fun that Christianity that's for damn sure.

>More fun that Christianity that's for damn sure.
t.Amerburger protestant who doesn't practice real Christianity.

tengriism is just another pagan religion and does not have the staying power that monotheistic faiths have

We would've seen the glorious triumph of Manichaeism.

Probably dead or balkanized, as without a single cultural force to unite them, insomuch as it did, Europe would never had been a thing. ...And without the whole banking and methodical record keeping thing the church both directly and indirectly introduced, the wealth concentration that occurred after the black death never would have happened, thus there would be no renaissance, and without a major written holy work like the Bible, the printing press probably wouldn't have taken off the way it did - and there woulda been a whole lot less trade, as these cultures would be a bit more alien to each other and more apt to retreat into their individual nations rather than see one another as fellow Christians.

...and I'm saying all this as an agnostic, mind you.

Granted, if another wide spread religion with complex literature and some room for individual ambition had taken over instead, the result would have been much the same - but if each nation or region had stuck to its individual pagan roots, rather than one forcibly taking the whole region, the industrial revolution and modern civilization probably would have happened somewhere else first... And we'd have a million threads about how all non-yellows are useless subhumans instead of non-whites, and how Euros are all primitivist suicide bomber religious fanatics.

Albeit, probably quite bit further into the future as China had been sitting on nearly all the technology Europe used in its renaissance for hundreds of years, and never put it together. It's not enough to just be under a unified culture, you gotta be united in the right sort of culture as well.

And not that this all didn't come without problems...

And yet you completely failed to refute it.